Margarete Bieber

Margarete Bieber (31 July 1879 – 25 February 1978) was a Jewish, German-American art historian, classical archaeologist, and professor. She was the second woman in Germany to become a professor extraordinarius. She, with her adopted daughter, in 1932 fled Germany and went to England and then in 1934 immigrated to the United States. Bieber was elected in 1971 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received in 1974 the Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Quotes

We owe our knowledge of pre-Greek art in Crete in large measure to the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans. The six volumes of Evans' publication of The Palace of Minos at Knossos, which appeared between 1921 and 1936, aroused a storm of enthusiasm for this marvelous civilization until then unknown. Cretan art is not only fundamentally different from but aesthetically superior to Egyptian and Oriental art. Georg Karo was from the beginning a close observer of this newly-discovered civilization and an important contributor to the vast literature which sprang up as a consequence of the many problems surrounding Minoan art. I remember his guided tours for Fellows of the German Archaeological Institute, whose director he became. They introduced us to this new civilization in the same clear and competent manner that I now find in his last book, written when he was 88 years old. … It is the best first introduction to Cretan art I know.
- (1965). "New Trends in the New Books on Ancient Art, 1958-1964". Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 6 (2): 75–142. (quote from p. 77)

The history of the cult of Cybele in Rome has been well investigated and is well known ... In 204 B.C. a meteorite was brought from Pessinus in Phrygia to Rome. It came on a ship named Salvia up the Tiber. When the ship got stuck in the shallow waters, Claudia Quinta, an aristocratic maiden, freed it and drew it upstream with her belt. This miracle is reported by Ovid (Fasti, 4, 291-348) in the time of Augustus. It is still represented on an altar in the Capitoline Museum dedicated by Claudia Syntyche, probably in the Antonine period ... The same event is represented on a medallion for Diva Faustina the elder, that is after death and deification in 141 A.D. by her husband the emperor Antoninus Pius ... The statue, or rather the sacred stone, representing Cybele was then brought up to the Palatine, where under lively participation by the aristocracy was dedicated to the Mater Deum Magna Idaea and a temple was erected and dedicated in 191 B.C. Augustus restored this temple as he did many other temples in Rome.
- The Statue of Cybele in the J. Paul Getty Museum. vol. 3. Getty Publications. 1968. p. 8.

I am to archaeologists what the Statue of Liberty is to tourists. They keep coming to see if the old lady is still around. And working.
- as quoted in: Edward T. James, ed (2004). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, Volume 5. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press. pp. 56–57. ISBN 978-0-674-01488-6. (quote from p. 57)